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I rarely know what I’m doing 48 hours before New Year’s Eve, but ever since 2013, I’ve looked forward to one ritual on New Year’s Day: Going out to brunch and brainstorming goals for the year ahead.
I know, I know — what a wild life, right?
But honestly, it’s always fun to jot down anything and everything I’d like to accomplish, no matter how mundane or how seemingly impossible. I write down anything I can think of, affecting any area of life, then narrow it down to the top 5-7 to focus on over the next 12 months.
Typically, Nate’s the only one who has to deal with my “aw, shucks” earnestness and goal-setting (although if you’re reading this, you’ve dealt with a lot of it too…and maybe you like it?), but given all of the research on how accountability helps you achieve more, I figured I’d better practice what I post.
Writing down the goals is easy; admitting them is tricky, because it means that if you fall short, everybody’s well aware of it. And if you crush them entirely?! Well, then you own the glory and rub it in everyone’s faces until the end of time have the satisfaction of completing what you set out to do.
Here are my six goals for 2016. Some are so simple I should hope I can achieve them (Flossing? Really?!); some may not happen, and that’s okay. I’m not going to let myself become ruled by an endless need to achieve (been there, been disappointed by that), but I will push toward progress.
Part of the challenge is deciding what to sacrifice to find the time to work toward these goals. One sacrifice I’m making is scaling back my Life Between Weekends posts. I really want to focus on featuring more voices and adding on contributors, which means stepping back a bit to reach out to people and edit, so I’ll only be posting one to two times per week. Later this year, after my two-month novel-writing challenge (more on that later), maybe I’ll bump it back up to three posts per week. For now, one or two makes sense.
If you or someone you know would like to write for LBW, please let me know! We’d love to feature your work! I can be reached at candace@lifebetweenweekends.com.
Top Photo: Greg Rakozy/Unsplash